[jat]

O.K. We can't be paranoid about everything, so I erased the article on Aspartame.

Stevia is a natural sweetener, available in packet forms, that does not affect
blood sugar.

Does anyone know much about Splenda? That is what I usually use.

Edited on 10:30 by jat

This post has been edited by jat: 26 December 2003 - 11:30 PM

[WHT]

jat, on Dec 26 2003, 04:32 PM, said:

On occasion when I fail to add my sugar substitute packets to my purse, I
am left with the decision of whether to add those little pink packets to my tea.
Here's some information on Aspartame, that will help me to completely avoid
it forever:

Aspartame, brand name Equal or Nutrasweet, is an artificial sweetener . It is
found in those little pink packets, and it's found in diet soda, chewing gum, and
most everything labeled "sugar free". Aspartame is a chemical made from
wood alcohol. In its raw form, it can cause blindness in the presence of heat.
It turns to formaldehyde in the body, the same substance that is grouped
in the class with poisons such as cyanide and arsenic. It can be the culprit
for numerous health problems in which causes are never discovered.
The FDA has documented over 90 symptoms of aspartame toxiicity. These
symptoms include headache, muscle spasms, vertigo, tendon and ligament pain,
confusion, poor memory and fatigue.
I have also read in Medical Journals that it changes the dna, and it manifests
behavioral changes, aggressive behavior.

Stevia is a natural sweetener, available in packet forms, that does not affect
blood sugar.

Does anyone know much about Splenda? That is what I usually use.

Splenda is made from sugar it is Dextrose and maltodextrin sucrose made by McNeil. It has a slight aftertaste. There web site has a lot of useful info on the product.

BTW NutraSweet is in a blue package. Saccharin is pink. Splenda is yellow.

[=Mark]

Sounds like an uncited hysterical rant to me. Rather like the person who went off on the Daily Gullet earlier in the year howling about MSG being "brain poison."

[Suzanne F]

But good coffee and good tea need no sweetener, and bad coffee and tea are not worth drinking. Why bother either way?

Splenda, being closely related chemically to sugar, apparently works well in cooking. I find it much too sweet. Why bother?

Sodium saccharine was banned in the US 30 years ago or so as a suspected carcinogen. Again, why bother?

[jsolomon]

=Mark, on Dec 26 2003, 06:16 PM, said:

Sounds like an uncited hysterical rant to me.  Rather like the person who went off on the Daily Gullet earlier in the year howling about MSG being "brain poison."   

Yeah, I always call neurotransmitters "brain poison" too.

Keep in mind, though, being closely related to sugar doesn't always count a whole lot in the body. There is a beast known as "invert sugar" that is chemically exactly like sugar except for it being the mirror image of our much-beloved alpha-D-glucose. Seriously! This is no Star Trek thing. This stuff is not biologically available as an energy or flavor source. [whisper] Fortunately, Mother nature provided for water to provide enough impetus for alpha-L-glucose to spontaneously switch to alpha-D-glucose so we're safe [/whisper]

Edit to fix crazy inscrutible quoting foul up.

This post has been edited by jsolomon: 26 December 2003 - 07:11 PM

[Suzanne F]

Ah, but invert sugar is invaluable for making sorbets -- GO, TRIMOLINE!!!!!!!

[fendel]

Suzanne F, on Dec 26 2003, 06:57 PM, said:

But good coffee and good tea need no sweetener. . . . Why bother?

Some of us like our coffee and tea sweet and/or liberally doused in half-and-half. I don't care how good a cup of coffee is, I can't enjoy it without a couple packets of sweetener. My preference is Splenda, although I'm not worried about aspartame or saccharin either.

[jat]

WHT , Thanks for the correction. Wasn't it Cher who used to advertize
for those blue packets?
Whenever January approaches I think of starting over and thinking very
healthy. My December Journal discussed eliminating 3 products:
Hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and aspartame. My husband drinks
at least a six pack of sodas a day. Drinking more water to cleanse the
body of toxins makes alot of sense. Sodas can be dehydrating and
rob us of calcium. I drink a soda, but I try to drink alot of water too.

When splenda came out, I've been using that.

Our bodies are complex, and I feel it worth considering what we feed it.

This post has been edited by jat: 27 December 2003 - 12:39 AM

[jat]

Hysterical rant? I have personally researched medical volumes for a paper.
Thank you. I have some BRILLIANT friends who won't touch the stuff when
we go out to eat. One is working on the SARS virus. And an aids vaccine is
pending. Others are Nobel prize winners and I feel they have a broad range
of knowledge.
My very close friend, my age died of a brain tumor November 15. Young
people 26 years of age are dying from serious illnesses.
I think we need to have an open mind about chemicals and additives.
I think it best that I spend my time on the Recipe Gullet next year and it's
recipe discussion. I don't like to be bothered by comments like yours.
I'll keep it food simple from now on. RECIPES ONLY. I'll wait for next year.

[foodie52]

My husband used to be a big diet soda drinker. A couple of years ago he started complaining about forgetfulness and fuzzy thinking.....it was scary. I remembered an article I had read about artificial sweeteners and their effect on brain function. I had him stop drinking that stuff and switch to water and unsweetened tea. The problem went away after a week or so.

I'm a believer....

[fendel]

For what it's worth - Diet Rite soda is sweetened with Splenda and acesulfame potassium, and does not contain aspartame. It's what we drink at home, (a) just in case and (b) because we prefer the taste.

[tryska]

don't write off neuro-toxins as hysteria.

research is still coming to the forefront.

as far as artificial sweeteners, about the only one i can tolerate, and endorse is stevia. of course i prefer to just go without sweetener. but for those who can't, if your not willing to use real sugar of some sort, stevia is the best alternative.

This post has been edited by tryska: 29 December 2003 - 08:15 AM

[Pan]

I tend to think of only things that are synthesized in laboratories as "synthetic." Stevia is a naturally-growing plant, is it not?

[tryska]

yes - stevia is a plant - while not synthetic in my mind it is an artifical sweetener, as it doesn't contain "sugar" of some sort.

[slkinsey]

Well... there are toxins and there are toxins. Potatoes, bamboo shoots and taro all contain toxins that can kill you, and I don't see too many people on eGullet worrying about them.

The fact is that there is really no hard evidence that aspartame is all that bad for you.

As for the brilliant people and Nobel Prize winners who are afraid of aspartame... Let me just say that I would be very surprised if anyone on these forums has met more NP winners than I. I even have a picture of myself at lunch with Linus Pauling. The fact is, however, that as brilliant as these people may be in some areas, they can be just as whacky in others. Megadoses of Vitamin C, anyone?

While I would agree that it is important to have an open mind about chemicals and additives, I would suggest that it is even more important to have a critical and skeptical mind when it comes to reports that such an extensively tested and examined substance is crossing the blood-brain barrier and causing brain tumors, cognitive impairment and so forth. For example, this article here (TechTalk from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) says, "Despite the high consumption of aspartame, the 48 normal subjects showed no changes in mood, memory, behavior, electroencephalograms (which record the electrical signals of the brain) or physiology that could be tied to aspartame, Dr. Spiers found. Although some subjects reported headaches, fatigue, nausea and acne, the same number of incidences were reported by subjects taking placebo and sugar as those taking aspartame." The Food and Drug Administration says, "Analysis of the National Cancer Institute's public data base on cancer incidence in the United States -- the SEER Program -- does not support an association between the use of aspartame and increased incidence of brain tumors." They also say, "To date, FDA has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems."

[trillium]

slkinsey, on Dec 29 2003, 10:22 AM, said:

... Let me just say that I would be very surprised if anyone on these forums has met more NP winners than I.

Hmmm..... I wouldn't. Not everyone here is a lawyer who wants to be a food writer, you know (wink).

regards,
trillium

[slkinsey]

Heh. Include me in that group!

You may be right about the NP guys, accounting for conferences, etc. My exposure to pointy heads mostly comes because I am the son of a very well-known scientist (Nat'l Academy member, etc.).

[bergerka]

jat, on Dec 26 2003, 04:32 PM, said:

O.K. We can't be paranoid about everything, so I erased the article on Aspartame.

Stevia is a natural sweetener, available in packet forms, that does not affect
blood sugar.

Does anyone know much about Splenda? That is what I usually use.

Edited on 10:30 by jat

My dad, both a doctor and a type II diabetic who spent the first ten years after he was diagnosed controlling his blood sugar with diet only and only recently started taking small doses of oral insulin, uses Splenda. I actually rather like it for cooking.

K

[tryska]

apparently i'm part of that minority that gets headaches, chills, and fatigues from nutrasweet (nothing makes me crash out faster than being accidentally dosed with diet coke), gets damn near anaphylactic shock from ace-k (tingly back of the tongue, it swells, i find it hard to breathe etc) and i'll admit i haven't had enough splenda to tell you if it gives me any strange reactions, but i know that i can taste it in that spot on the back of my tongue like i can nutrasweet and ace-k, so i just stay away.

[slkinsey]

tryska, on Dec 29 2003, 05:14 PM, said:

apparently i'm part of that minority that gets headaches, chills, and fatigues from nutrasweet (nothing makes me crash out faster than being accidentally dosed with diet coke), gets damn near anaphylactic shock from ace-k (tingly back of the tongue, it swells, i find it hard to breathe etc)...

That's very odd. The FDA says that "carefully controlled clinical studies show that aspartame is not an allergen."

I wonder if it's something else. Do you get the same reaction from just raw aspartame by itself? I wonder if if would happen if you drank a diet coke that had been spiked with enough high fructose corn syrup that you were unable to taste the difference. I am not suggesting, of course, that you don't react the way you say you react. I just wonder a bit about what might be causing it.

[tryska]

i'm really not sure.....i tested myself a few times - well

actually i had the aspartame gumballs when they first came out - i got headaches and chills (i was maybe 13). didn't like the bitter taste either, so i just never used it again.

tried a diet coke in college - got the headache and chills again.

accidentally got a diet sprite at a drive-thru in my early 20s, on my lunch hour - decided to suck it up, literally, and wound up having to leave early so i could curl up in a ball in bed shivering and unable to move, again with pounding headahce.

that was the worst time ever. i think the reaction is dose dependent tho - i can take for instance, protein shakes with very minute levels of nutrasweet, and tolerate them okay, but often times there's lots more in the shake to maybe act as a buffer as opposed to straight nutrasweet and water.

i tried this once with an ace-k sweetened protein powder and that was the time i had a mild anaphylactic reaction.

i don't know if this is just myth or not, but i've heard that people who can actually taste nutrasweet are typically the same people who have adverse reactions to it.

to me it tastes like poison. (but i don't know if that's a clouded pavlovian perception or not)

This post has been edited by tryska: 29 December 2003 - 03:44 PM

[Pan]

tryska, on Dec 29 2003, 10:16 AM, said:

yes - stevia is a plant - while not synthetic in my mind it is an artifical sweetener, as it doesn't contain "sugar" of some sort.

I'd propose to call it an "alternative sweetener," but I definitely would not use the words "synthetic" or "artificial."

[jsolomon]

Tryska, while a reaction of this type is not common, it has been known to happen with many drugs or other things. I have heard of people having allergic reactions to ibuprofen (certainly much to small to attach to an antibody itself) and various therapeutic steroids. It's really fascinating about how and why this happens. But, I will leave it at there are certain small populations that get allergic reactions to non-allergenic foods and drugs, including aspartame.

[tryska]

jsolomons - yeah i know - i don't put a whole lot of stock in the FDA anyway - too deep in the pockets of the Pharmaceuticals.

i can only say that this is what happens to me. And i have no other allergies, except to mango skins. I don't have na overly sensitive system, but at the same time, i'm quite body-aware, if that makes sense, so i pay close attention to and changes in my equilibrium.

i guess i also work on the principal that if it doesn't work well with me and my constitiution, it ain't kosher - especially with it's man-made products.


pan - i can go with alternative sweetener. i think in terms of nutrition, calories counts, glycemic indexes, etc. so that may be where the semantics differ.

[jat]

I changed my mind, I decided to write my final post on the boards before 2004.

Slkinsey,
I am not saying aspartame is associated with brain tumors. I know that alot of
young people are dying with serious problems.
Also a study of 48, is no study. Have you looked at recent studies? Medical
journals, the actual scientific studies?
Do you just like to be argumentative? I don't understand how the "pointy heads"
deserve less, when their medical knowledge saves millions of lives..
Do you give no credence to the hours spent in labs testing, researching..
Or the charitable side I have observed that few acknowledge or get to observe..
I admire the medical genius. I don't know what you've observed, but from my
viewpoint I am grateful that these dedicated people are working overtime.
Take a look at this ( . ) HIV is so small that 230 milliion hiv particles would
fit on that dot. Anyone who can figure out the chemical and biological aspects
of how to fight the virus deserves profound respect. I have seen the
mathematical equations in figuring out the theories.
And you are aspiring to writing food articles? That is good, but on a humanitarian
scale I will let you do the comparison in retrospect to the task of what
is needed to solve some of the world problems. This is why I respect their
opinion due to a scientific background that few have.
I have made the decision to drop the boards discussions, due to the
RUDE nature of responses. This is something I do not look forward to.
I may post recipes only and discuss them on ReclipeGullet.comCenter only. So no more response will be forthcoming. jat

[Pan]

Just speaking for myself, I would observe that Sam does not disagree in order to be disagreeable. If you don't like arguments that are on-topic, a discussion board is definitely not for you. But the pity is, if you don't make any further replies, you can't give us specific references to the studies you generically refer to. Could or would you please advance the discussion on aspartame by pointing to some studies that show any kind of danger from the substance? Frankly, I am suspicious of aspartame (and hate its taste, anyway), but when I did a PubMed search, I found that all referenced studies in recent years showed nothing but positive effects from aspartame. So if you'd just thicken your skin a little bit, we might yet derive some benefit from your presence in this thread.

[alacarte]

If you just want to focus on the taste of Splenda vs. Nutrasweet vs. plain old sugar, I recommend this article, which ran on Slate awhile back.

[mudbug]

I've grown stevia. Stevia is an herb and it is a wonderful alternative for sugar and sugar substitutes. Just top by a farmer's market in the spring or a greenhouse. Pick of a leaf of the plant and chew it. You'd be amazed how sweet it is.

Last month I posted a question regarding making sugarless peanut brittle from scratch and Whey Low was recommended. I ordered it and made the brittle. It came out very well. No complaints.

Whey Low

[Pan]

My father has a fair degree of glucose intolerance (I think it's called), so he generally substitutes stevia where sugar is called for in recipes. He finds that he gets the same degree of sweetness as expected when he uses half the amount of stevia that he would have used of sugar. (I had trouble figuring out how to write that sentence clearly; did that work? )

Mudbug, where are you located? I understand that most stevia is grown in Argentina, I think Patagonia?? Which would call for a cool, pretty dry climate, I imagine.

[jsolomon]

tryska, on Dec 30 2003, 07:21 AM, said:

jsolomons - yeah i know - i don't put a whole lot of stock in the FDA anyway - too deep in the pockets of the Pharmaceuticals.

I think you're taking me out of context. I put a lot of faith in the FDA. I work in the medical field giving drugs to poor saps who come under my care, and I have spent time researching drugs as well. I think there are a good many times that the FDA has come through for Americans. Granted, I can think of at least as many ways in which their oversight has kept beneficial drugs from coming to the pharmacopeia. But, a lot of my criticism of the FDA is a social argument and a satiric commentary on our current society.

Be that as it may, allergic reactions can be very serious life threats at times. I applaud you for listening to your body. However, since I don't hold that foodstuffs such as peanuts which have a higher incidence of serious allergy should have a warning lable or be pulled from the shelves, I don't think that aspartame should be pulled because of a handful of isolated allergies. At some point the consumer has to take responsibility for the foods they put in their mouths, just as the consumer, not the producer is responsible when some poor shlub chokes to death in a steak house because he couldn't chew his well-done piece of leather.

That's why I get mine seared and warm, and not much else